Two-thirds of all pedestrian deaths in Bangalore happen on arterial roads

Two-thirds of all pedestrian deaths in Bangalore happen on arterial roads

Out of the 282 pedestrians that died in Bangalore in 2017, 186 pedestrians have died on the city’s arterial roads. These roads are major throughfares which are usually designed to carry high volumes of traffic. There are about 80 arterial roads in Bangalore covering a total distance of 923 km.

The below graph represents the distribution of pedestrian deaths in 2017 based on the type of road. Two-thirds of all pedestrian deaths happened on arterial roads, while sub-arterial and local roads together contributed to one third of the deaths.

The table below lists pedestrian fatalities in Bangalore’s major arterial corridors. The Outer Rind Road, which is 80 km long, covers only about 0.5% of the total road network in the city. This stretch contributed to 12% of all the pedestrian fatalities in the city. Hosur Road, Mysore Road, Bellary Road, Tumkur Road, and Old Madras Road are some of the other major arterial roads that have seen a high number of pedestrian fatalities.

Out of the 186 pedestrians that were killed on an arterial road, 125 were crossing the road when the crash happened. The rest were either walking on the side of the road, standing by the roadside, doing an activity on the roadside, or waiting for a bus.

The address of the victim was recorded in the case of 106 of the total 186 victims. 70% of these victims were staying in areas adjoining the arterial roads. This means that a majority of people being killed are residents of nearby areas, for whom access to arterial roads is extremely crucial on a daily basis.

Most of the victims were also observed to be from low-income backgrounds. The occupation of the victim was recorded in the case of 43 victims. 26 of these victims were working either as a labourer, sweeper, driver, house help, security guard, courier, or a gardener.

Furthermore, nearly 30% of all the fatal pedestrian crashes that happened on the arterial roads involved a hit and run by the motorist.

The data presented in this article was extracted from the police FIR reports pertaining to fatal pedestrian crashes in Bangalore in the year 2017. The data was obtained from the Bangalore Traffic Police through RTI applications.